The Trump administration’s attacks on major U.S. law firms, through executive orders and other means, are growing — and becoming a bigger deal than most people probably would have imagined. Two main response options have arisen from the firms: fight or capitulate. Building a united front against the assaults has proved difficult.

As we recently noted, in February and March Trump signed executive orders targeting two so-called Big Law firms, Washington, D.C.-based Covington & Burling LLP and Seattle-based Perkins Coie LLP, because they did work for people or causes he doesn’t like. The main punishments are withdrawal of security clearances and banishment from federal buildings (including, apparently, courthouses). This means the firms can’t represent certain clients.

Covington has been pretty quiet about the matter, but Perkins Coie sued. The judge temporarily barred enforcement of most of the edict.

More recently, Trump issued orders against Chicago’s Jenner & Block LLP and Washington, D.C.’s Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, known as WilmerHale, both of which opted, like Perkins Coie, to sue. They also won temporary blocks of the decrees.

Pro Bono

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, both based in New York, did the opposite, agreeing to not take on causes Trump doesn’t like, such as DEI, and to do millions of dollars of pro bono work for causes he does like. Next in the dock were New York’s Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Milbank LLP, which on Tuesday agreed to similar deals and, like Skadden, did so before an executive order materialized.

As The New York Times’ David Enrich put it, “The orders have revealed stark differences in how powerful law firms want to handle an aggressive and unpredictable president.” The firms capitulating to the pressure face an additional crisis via the anger of their associate lawyers, which could hurt recruiting efforts.

On March 22, Trump also signed a memorandum against lawyers and law firms in general. It directs the attorney general “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States.”

Crisis Victim

Part of crisis communications is figuring whether you might become the victim of a crisis. An indicator here would be if you’ve hired people or worked on causes Trump objects to. For example, one Willkie Farr partner was chief investigative counsel on the House committee that probed the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Willkie Farr also recently hired Doug Emhoff, former Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband.

The difficulty in how to respond to these attacks is clear. The firms fear attracting more of Trump’s ire and losing clients. But it’s hard to see how the blitzkrieg could be repelled without some sort of collective action. One effort has been the circulation among firms of a draft of a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed in the Perkins Coie case.

On March 30, the Financial Times reported that none of the top 20 U.S. law firms by revenue signed on, though most of the 248 firms approached had.

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